Can older Giants like Posey, Crawford, Longoria adjust to hitting’s new norm?

Buster Posey hits his grand slam in Game 5 of the 2012 Division Series at Cincinnati. Not pictured: catcher Ryan Hanigan with a reaction that Giants fans will cherish for the rest of thir lives.

Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle

MILWAUKEE — If the image of Buster Posey hitting a grand slam to win Friday night’s game seemed familiar, it should, because it looked a lot like his grand slam off Mat Latos in Game 5 of the 2012 division series at Cincinnati.

Matt Albers threw his fastball in almost the same location, Posey took the same swing and the ball traveled the same distance or even farther, though more toward straightaway center.

Both pitches were at the knees, which has always been a hot zone for Posey. His blast against the Brewers will raise new hope that he can rediscover that long-lost potent swing. He had homered just three times this season before the slam.

However, the big hit also highlights an issue for the Giants that the front office will have to address as it moves forward with a number of players in their 30s, such as Posey, Brandon Crawford and Evan Longoria. You can throw 28-year-old Joe Panik in there, too.

Pitching has changed in the age of launch angles, uppercut swings and a seemingly infinite supply of pitchers who throw 95 mph and above.

The old adage of “keep the ball down” does not always apply. Pitchers are being taught to throw up in the strike zone, especially the hard stuff, because a hitter cannot easily swing upward and keep his hands on top of the ball, which is still the name of the game.

We’ve seen it with Tyler Beede and Shaun Anderson, who both have found success throwing fastballs up. Beede made the shift a few starts ago with a night-and-day difference in his results.

So you have players in their 30s who can’t outrun Father Time. With rare exception, hitters can’t fire their hands as quickly as they did in their 20s, reaction time slows and barreling those high fastballs becomes an even greater challenge.

Adjusting is always hard, but more so for players who have been hitting a certain way for 20 years or more going back to Little League. Hunter Pence, who resurrected his career at 35 (now 36) by doing extensive offseason work to change his swing, set an inspiring example, but how many Hunter Pences are there?

So the question becomes, can struggling hitters like Crawford, Panik and Posey reverse their hitting slides, or is this just who they are going to be?

The answer is critical, because Posey and Crawford are signed through 2021. Panik will reach his final arbitration year this winter, so keeping him becomes a cost-benefit question. Longoria is signed through 2022, but lordy, look at his swing the past two weeks.

Brandon Belt is signed long-term, too, but his on-base acumen makes him a different animal.

Manager Bruce Bochy chafed at the notion that these hitters are who they are going to be, even beyond his contention that Posey is still not all the way back from his hip surgery more than 10 months ago.

Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi was asked the same question and said, “I expect them to get up to their numbers because as veteran guys they’ve done it year in and year out, and you kind of expect a sort of positive regression.”

As with everything else in this game and in life, time will tell.

Bumgarner Night: Madison Bumgarner returns to the mound a week after he was drilled by a liner in the first inning. Every Bumgarner start is part of a countdown, obviously, but who knows? If the Giants keep playing the way they have in their recent run of eight wins in 10 games, they might want to keep Bumgarner.

Can’t believe those words came out of this Macbook.

Lineups: Bochy has changed his lineup, partly to address Alex Dickerson’s back injury. Austin Slater is not starting a night after he sparked the team with an off-field home run.

Bochy did explain that he started Slater against the right-handed Chase Anderson on Friday night because the pitcher had reverse splits. Not so Zach Davies, with a 150-point difference in OPS. You want as many lefties to face him as you can.

Henry Schulman has covered the San Francisco Giants since 1988, starting with the Oakland Tribune and San Francisco Examiner before moving to the San Francisco Chronicle in 1998. His career has spanned the "Earthquake World Series" in 1989 and the Giants' three World Series championships in 2010, 2012 and 2014. In between, he covered Barry Bonds' controversial career with the Giants, including Bonds ' successful quests for home-run records and his place in baseball's performance-enhancing drugs scandal. Known for his perspective and wit, Henry also appears frequently on radio and television talking Giants, and is a popular follow on Twitter.